by Steve Liszka
Nick sat forward on his sofa. ‘Oh, yeah, and what’s that supposed to mean, exactly? People like us?’
‘It means, Nick, that the reason fire stations like mine are having to close, and why hospitals are shutting down and disabled people’s allowances are being cut is because the richest people in this country don’t bother to pay their fair share of taxes. And your job is to facilitate that. You help them to shirk their responsibilities, and as a result, the rest of us suffer. Yet, here you are, looking down on me like I’ve done something wrong. That’s what I mean when I say people like you.’
Nick rolled his eyes as his friends groaned loudly. None of them said anything to challenge Dylan; they were happy to sit back and watch the two of them scrap it out.
‘Let’s have a guess who’s a fan of Jeremy Corbyn,’ Nick said. ‘Come on, Dylan, surely even you’re not that naive. What do you think would happen if all these businesses had to pay ridiculous amounts of tax? Not that any of our clients belong in that bracket, by the way. But back to the point, they’d leave the country, that’s what they’d do. Now what good would that do us?’
‘Then, let them go,’ Dylan said, ‘because if they don’t pay their taxes, then they ain’t contributing. If I earn less than thirty grand a year and can afford to pay my share, then I don’t see why your rich chums can’t do the same. Yeah, I may get a bit of downtime at work, but at least I do a job that contributes to society. I can go home at night knowing that I’ve helped people. But you lot, the only people you help are yourselves and your tax-dodging clients. So, don’t tell me we’re all in it together, because we’re not. You assholes are part of the problem.’
A broad smile spread across Nick’s face as his eyes diverted away from Dylan to a figure standing behind him. Before Dylan even saw who it was, he could feel his blood run cold. He turned around to see Felicity staring back at him. Her arms were crossed, and he couldn’t tell if it was the anger or sadness in her face that was winning the fight for domination.
‘How long have you been standing there?’ he asked.
‘Long enough,’ she said, before storming towards the door and charging out.
Dylan sprang to his feet and ran after her.
‘Thanks for coming!’ Nick yelled after him. ‘It was great to see you, mate.’
Nick the Prick
Jimmy looked at his watch then shook his head. ‘He’s not coming, I’m telling you.’
‘He’ll be here,’ Dylan said. ‘I didn’t think he would, either, at first, but when I started crying down the phone, I had him hooked.’
Lenny looked at the man in disgust. He was meant to be on leave, but there was no way he was missing out on this. ‘I honestly don’t think I’ve ever met such a pussy in my life. You know, my bathroom has got more skincare products in it now than when my ex-missus lived with me, and she was a stripper.’
The morning after the party, Felicity had politely asked Dylan to move out for a few weeks while she thought about things. She didn’t care that he’d had an argument with Nick, but what she couldn’t get her head around was the things she’d heard him say about the profession they shared. If he felt that way about Nick, then the same must have held true for her. They’d sat up for nearly two hours with Felicity trying to work out how he could be with someone if he held such a dim view of not only her career choice, but also her moral being. It was all too much for her, and after sleeping on it, she ordered him to pack a bag.
Lenny had invited him in, if not with open arms, but an understanding of what he was going through. When his relationship had broken up, he’d spent three months sleeping on the couch in Bodhi’s boat, and despite spending all his life living on the coast, he fucking hated water.
Their time together had given Lenny plenty of opportunity to grill his new flat-mate about what the hell he was doing in the apartment of the man they were following. It didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that Nick must have been laundering Mac’s drug profits. The question that still remained was what they were going to do about it. Usually, Dylan would have seized on the chance to get one over on Nick, but now Felicity wanted nothing more to do with him, he no longer really cared.
‘So now you two are openly dating,’ Jo said to the odd couple, ‘does that mean you’re going to stop pretending you’re both straight?’
Even though she was keeping the baby, she’d decided to go against brigade policy and not tell them about the pregnancy. With everything that was going on, she couldn’t risk going on light duties and let someone else into their circle. They had way too many secrets for that. She’d also decided not to tell the rest of the Watch. It would only make them over-protective of her the way that men instinctively did. Jo couldn’t handle the thought of that.
‘Even if he does come,’ Jimmy said, looking at his watch again, ‘what makes you think it’s going to work?’
‘It’ll work,’ Lenny said. ‘Let me deal with that.’
‘Please don’t do anything silly,’ Wesley said, ‘I just want to remind you that we are at our place of work.’
Lenny laughed. ‘Don’t sweat it. We’ve got it all worked out.’
Nick’s Audi drove past the window and into the yard. Dylan jumped out of his seat and headed for the door.
‘Don’t you want me to handle this?’ Lenny asked.
Dylan shook his head. ‘I got it.’
‘Stay cool. We don’t want to create a scene out there.’
‘No problem. Like I said, I got it.’
Nick was out of his car and walking towards the door when Dylan met him. ‘Hey, Dylan… I’m sorry to hear about you and Felicity, but I really don’t know what you expect me to do about it.’
Dylan struck him with an ugly looking hay-maker; the punch landing just below his ear.
Nick recoiled, then brought his hand up to the violated area. The look on his face was of shock more than pain. He inspected his hand, making sure there was no blood. ‘What the fuck was that?’
‘Fuck you, you dick,’ Dylan said.
It was fear that suddenly gripped Nick’s face as his attention turned from Dylan to the grizzly bear of a man charging towards him. He turned and grabbed at the handle of his car door, but before he could open it, Lenny was on him, wrapping him in a headlock before dragging him off towards the BA compressor room.
‘I thought I told you to stay cool,’ he said to Dylan as Nick turned purple and gave up any attempts at resistance.
Other than a rack of charged cylinders and a couple of empties that were connected to the compressor, the BA room was pretty much derelict. In the old days, when firefighters were still allowed to get involved in the maintenance of their equipment, the room had also been a workshop. The large vice that took centre-stage on the ancient wooden workbench was the only clue to the room’s former existence. These days it only got used if one of the guys had a DIY task they couldn’t complete at home. On this particular evening, it had a four-foot length of steel re-bar secured into it that Jimmy had brought in from his garage.
Nick’s eyes moved back and forth from the vice to the hydraulic cutters that Bodhi was holding in his hands. He was wearing his full fire-kit with his helmet on and visor down, reflecting the captive’s scared image back at him. Nick tried to move, but his legs had been gaffer taped to those of the chair he was sitting on, and his arms were bound behind his back using the same method. Try as he might, he was going nowhere.
‘Please, can you just loosen the tape?’ he said to Lenny, then seeing the complete lack of sympathy on his face, switched his eyes to Dylan. ‘It’s cutting off the circulation to my hands.’
‘That’s probably not a bad thing,’ Jimmy said, looking at the cutters. ‘It means you’ll bleed less when we cut them off.’
‘You can’t!’ was all Nick managed to say.
Jimmy gave him a look that suggested otherwise.
‘These little beauties,’ he said as he patted the blades of the cutters that Bodhi was holding, ‘are what
we use to cut people out of cars. They can go through aluminium, cast iron, steel…’ He thought about it for a second. ‘Pretty much anything you put in front of them.’
He nodded at Jo who pulled the ripcord on the hydraulic power pack. Nick winced at the roar of its engine. One of the cables that ran from the pack connected to the tool Bodhi was holding. Thankful to get it to work, as the weight was starting to have an effect on him, he twisted the lever on the handle, opening the blades to their full extent. HehghhHhhh
Turning towards the vice, he put the steel bar between the open jaws, then twisted the lever in the opposite direction. The blades went through it like it wasn’t even there. As one half of the bar fell to the ground with a loud clang, Jimmy nodded at Jo who switched off the power-pack. The room fell silent again and filled with the smell of petrol.
Jimmy cast his eyes on Nick. ‘You were saying?’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said. ‘I mean, you’re firefighters. You’re supposed to help people. You’re the good guys, for Christ’s sake.’
His response made Lenny laugh. ‘That’s right, dickhead, we’re the good guys. But you, you piece of shit, you’re with the bad guys, aren’t you? And I’m not talking about those rich scumbags that Dylan likes to get all worked up about. I mean, real bad guys. Nasty horrible drug dealers who wouldn’t think twice about killing us.’
Nick shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Dylan jumped in. ‘This lot saw you taking a briefcase from that scumbag Mac. So, you better start talking, otherwise you need to consider what sport you want to compete in for the next Paralympics.’
‘I don’t know anyone called Mac,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Really?’ Lenny said. ‘Then choose which of your limbs you like least, because one of them is about to go bye-bye.’
Nick struggled, then, as if realising there was no way he was getting out, calmed down and turned his attention to Wesley, the person he saw as most likely to be able to negotiate with.
‘This is silly. We both know you’re not going to hurt me. Why don’t you just let me go now, and I swear I’ll never tell anyone what happened here tonight.’ He attempted a smile. ‘It’ll be like it never even happened.’
Wesley stepped forward and offered a smile of his own. ‘Let me ask you something, Nick. Do you know how many people go missing in this country every year? Sure, if you don’t turn up for work on Monday morning, there’ll be a bit of a hoo-ha for a few weeks, but after that, when they can’t find your body, do you know what will happen?’
Nick shook his head.
‘Nothing,’ Wesley said, ‘that’s what. Absolutely nothing. See, the thing is, life goes on. Not for you, of course, you’ll be dead. But for everyone else, they adapt, they get over it, they move on. That’s one thing I’ve learnt since I’ve been in this job; that the human race is a pretty resourceful and, when it comes down to it, ruthless bunch. There’ll be tears at first, but two months down the line, it’ll be “Nick who?”. And the police won’t give a shit. They’ve got so much on their plates, that when they find your clothes that we’ve dumped at Beachy Head, they’ll be happy to put it down as just another suicide. Now, think carefully, my friend, do you want to give us the information we need, or are you happy defending your not-very-nice mates and becoming another statistic? Make your mind up, because we haven’t got all night.’
Nick sat there silently for a moment then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t say anything. If I do, I’m dead.’
Just then, they were interrupted by the sound of the bells going down. Jimmy turned to look at Wesley. ‘I thought you’d taken us off the run?’
‘I thought you’d done it!’
The plan had been to phone up control and report a problem with their appliance’s brakes. The lorry would instantly be taken off the run until a mechanic came over to take a look at it, and if they were unable to fix it there and then, a replacement from somewhere else in the brigade would be brought in for them to ride. As the on-call mechanic lived not far from Hastings, they knew that gave them at least an hour to extract Nick’s confession. Unfortunately, the call had never been made.
‘Right,’ Wesley said, as the others disconnected the tool from the power pack. ‘Let’s get this lot back on the pump. The quicker we get there, the quicker we can get back.’
As Lenny was off-duty, he would be the only one left on station. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to Wesley. ‘I’ll keep him company. No one’s going to turn up on station, and if they do, they’re not going to come back here.’
‘With any luck, it’ll be nothing,’ Wesley said as the rest of the crew picked up the tools and took them back to the appliance.
Jimmy closed the RTC locker and looked back at Lenny. ‘Be nice!’
They had been called to an AFA at one of their regular shouts, a centre for homeless people with drug dependency. One of the occupants had fallen asleep while smoking a joint and set light to his bed sheets. A member of staff had got in there quickly and put out the fire using a carbon dioxide extinguisher. They had been lucky; in different circumstances, it could have easily resulted in at least one death, probably more, considering the state of the occupants. On the way back from the call, Wesley radioed control, letting them know about the vehicle’s suspected brake failure.
When they got back to the station, they found Nick and Lenny where they had left them. Lenny looked the same as he did when they had gone, but sometime during their twenty-minute absence, a profound change had taken place in Nick. He was white when they entered the room. His jeans were darkened at the crotch and a pool of piss lay underneath his chair. When Dylan approached him, the look of terror in Nick’s eyes would have made anyone feel sorry for him.
Jimmy pulled Lenny to one side and whispered into his ear, ‘What the fuck have you done to him?’
Lenny shrugged. ‘I dunno. I may have told him a few things about what Dylan was going to do to him. He didn’t know what a jealous man our new boy could be until I filled him on the details.’
Jimmy looked across to Dylan’s gormless form. Nick peered at him from the corner of his eye like he was confronting the devil himself. ‘What, and he believed you?’
‘I’m very convincing when I need to be.’
Jimmy turned to Nick, seizing on the momentum shift. ‘Right, talk now, or we leave you and him,’ he nodded at Dylan, ‘to sort this out alone.’
Nick shook his head. ‘No, don’t. I’ll tell you what you want to know, just keep him away from me.’
Figuring what Lenny had done, Dylan tried his best to look tough.
‘Okay,’ Jimmy said, ‘we know who he is, and we know his business. What we need from you is something that we can use against him.’
‘I can’t,’ Nick said. ‘He’ll kill me.’
Jimmy pointed at Dylan. ‘And he’ll kill you if you don’t. Give us what we need, and we’ll make sure your name stays out of it.’
‘There’s nothing to give you, that’s the point of what I do. I put the money through a number of ghost companies, and the next thing you know, it’s clean. If I just said, here’s a hundred thousand pounds for drug deals, that wouldn’t make me very good at what I do, would it? No offence, but even you guys could do that. I make sure the money can’t be traced to him. You may not like it, but I’m good at cleaning his dirty money.’
‘You must be so proud,’ Dylan said.
Nick looked up to him and said nothing.
‘So, what you’re saying,’ Wesley said, ‘is Mac is pretty much untouchable. You can’t give us anything on him.’
‘Like I said before, I have no idea who this Mac guy is.’
The look of confusion on his face suggested Nick was telling the truth.
‘Yes, you fucking do!’ Lenny shouted at him. ‘The old guy with the briefcase. I watched him give it to you.’
Despite the gravity of his situation, Ni
ck somehow managed to laugh. ‘Him? He’s just fetches and carries stuff. The man’s a fucking gopher.’
Dylan knelt down so he was eye-level with Nick. ‘So, who do you work for? I’m not asking again.’
Their captive looked around the room at the faces staring back at him before answering. ‘Bogarde. I work for Jonathan Bogarde.’
‘Do you think he’s going to be all right?’ Bodhi asked as they sat in the canteen drinking tea. ‘He looked pretty shaken up when we let him go.’
‘Fuck him,’ Jo said. ‘The question you want to be asking is, do you think he’s going to go to the police about what just happened?’
Bodhi gave her a sideways glance. ‘Easy. There’s no need to take that tone.’
‘Ahh,’ Lenny said. ‘They’re having their first domestic in front of us. Isn’t it cute?’
‘I’m serious,’ Jo said. ‘If he does, we’re fucked. We could all go to jail for what we just did.’
‘And lose our jobs,’ Wesley added.
‘Listen,’ Lenny said, unconcerned. ‘After the things I told him when you were on that call, there’s no way he’ll be talking to anyone. As far as he’s concerned, Dylan here is the worst thing since Hannibal Lecter. He’s not going to do anything that he thinks may piss our man off. He wouldn’t dare.’
Dylan nodded. ‘That’s right. From now on, you lot better show me some respect.’
‘Shut up, knobhead,’ Jo said.
‘What exactly did you say to him?’ Dylan asked.
‘Honestly, you don’t want to know.’
‘Okay,’ Jimmy said, ‘that’s one problem hopefully dealt with. Now onto a bigger one. What are we going to do about Bogarde?’
Bodhi looked to the others. ‘What I want to know is, what the hell he’s doing involving himself in drug trafficking? He’s a multi-millionaire.’
